If you all remember correctly, HP hinted that this day would come right after their purchase of Palm:

Mark Hurd, HP CEO, June 2010:
"We didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn't seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The WebOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a web operating environment...We have tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices...Now imagine that being a web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition."

Truth of the matter is we just saw this come to fruition today. HP never wanted to release smartphones. No sure what all the hoopla was about in February but Hurd made this very clear over a year ago. None of us believed it though. Only issue was that HP had terrible ideas for WebOS. Why would anyone care if WebOS was in a printer or a toaster?

they were a company who's biggest revenue stream was shrinking to tablets. I still maintain they really only wanted webos to put in tablets. Phones they'd have rather done without. Hence these statements. I'm sure they wanted them in printers as stupid as that sounds. but to me it was always a tablet play.

they were a company who's biggest revenue stream was shrinking to tablets. I still maintain they really only wanted webos to put in tablets. Phones they'd have rather done without. Hence these statements. I'm sure they wanted them in printers as stupid as that sounds. but to me it was always a tablet play.

But they give their Tablet only 6 weeks and call it quits? They even gave the HP Slate more time than that...

Didn't they say they were going to put webOS in all the hardware they control. PC, printers, tablets, etc. Based on their announcements, sounds like they are giving up on hardware altogether.

I swear these guys are stupid. It seems to me they are making rash decisions based on short term data. They are planning for the next quarter instead of the next five years. To bad Hewlett and Packard aren't around to set their company right again. They would know how to take advantage of webOS and the Touchpad.

they were a company who's biggest revenue stream was shrinking to tablets. I still maintain they really only wanted webos to put in tablets. Phones they'd have rather done without. Hence these statements. I'm sure they wanted them in printers as stupid as that sounds. but to me it was always a tablet play.

PC revenue stream? I thought you would have got it by now that Leo Apotheker has always been an enterprise (software) guy, he wants to make HP another SAP or IBM.

Seriously? It seems clear to me that Mark Hurd was the only one who actually wanted Palm.

Not only one who wanted, but only one with straight idea what to do with it. Guy never told he is against licensing or anything, he simply had vision of WebOS pieces scattered across everything HP and smartphones was not part of that vision.

But they give their Tablet only 6 weeks and call it quits? They even gave the HP Slate more time than that...

nobody bought it. Sorry. in another year you'd still have nobody buying it just like the Pre minus, pre plus sales basically fell off a cliff. if you listened to the conference call they basically said waiting would just mean losing more money.

Originally Posted by rickwestland

PC revenue stream? I thought you would have got it by now that Leo Apotheker has always been an enterprise (software) guy, he wants to make HP another SAP or IBM.

I know what Leo is. Leo said he'd focus on enterprise from the day he took the job. Anyone surprised now wasn't listening to his early interviews. But that's not what my post was about. it wasn't about Leo. My comment is about what hp's original intent was. About what HP wanted at the time they bought webos. From the beginning. And Leo was not running HP then. It was always about tablets and the tablets didn't make them a sell well and got trounced by ipad 2.